Jacob Buss WRD 110 Fall 2021

  https://medium.com/@iarifi/is-hockey-becoming-too-expensive-for-upcominghockey-player-4242d4bea193 This article is from a guy who played hockey for 17 years and talks about his experience of hockey expenses. He talked about how as the years went on, hockey got more and more expensive. Costing his parents thousands upon thousands of dollars a year and constantly increasing.  https://www.usahockey.com/diversityequityandinclusion This is a page from USA hockey’s website on inclusivity. It has a lot of cool articles and stories linked but in my opinion does not show the entire picture. 

 https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/flyers/wayne-simmonds-racism-hockey-diversity-alliance-determined-change The article linked above is an interview with Wayne Simmons, one of the few African American players in the NHL today. In the interview, he talked about his struggles as a black man in a white-dominated sport. s https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/zach-sullivans-story-shows-happens-hockey-embraces/ This article is an interview with Zach Sullivan. Zach is the first openly bisexual player in the NHL. He talked about how welcomed he felt by the entire community.  These two interviews show both sides of the same coin. On one hand, Zach was flooded with support. However, why was he scared to come out? Why is this such a big deal? It is a big deal because being the minority in the hockey community can be very intimidating.

Link to audio:   https://www.mediafire.com/file/o7lzjo694swrti8/New+Recording.m4a/file Light at the End of the Tunnel Imagine you worked all summer for a spot on your high school sports team, only to see your name in blue ink next to the roster. A few minutes after that happened to me, my good friend Austin and I were called back into the coaches office. We were then told that the blue marker means the coaches want us around, just not enough to put us on the full roster. 4 years later this proved to be the best thing that ever happened to my hockey career, but at the time, it was the worst. I felt like an outcast. It almost felt like I had an all access media pass, but wasn’t actually a part of the team. Looking back it taught me that if I ever wanted to be able to say I truly played for Benet hockey, I would have to work twice as hard as the guy next to me. The following two years were arguably worse, if you can believe that. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “how could it be ...

I listened to the Mohammed Ali and Tony Hawk podcasts. Mohammed Ali talked about his neighborhood community, schools, local shops, Olympic community, boxing community, and his family. Tony Hawk talked about his skater community, his schools and his family. I found in both podcasts that these men knew from a young age what they wanted to do. They both were determined to follow their dream and did not listen to anyone who told them they couldn’t. This listening experienced transitioned into insight when I realized that I sometimes have let society or specific people tell me that I can’t follow a dream of mine. I realized while listening that what is the point of having a dream if we are too scared to follow it. Mohammed Ali shared that from a young age he ran around his town telling everyone he would one day be the heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist, but people laughed at him. Tony Hawk went pro at age 14 and was lectured in front of his entire class that he was wasting h...